US-Phl relationship ‘at its best right now’

Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Romualdez is urging the Philippine business community to rally behind President Marcos’ push for economic reforms that will enable the country to attract more foreign investments and compete with our strong neighbors in the region — Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, who are all likewise trying to attract such investments.

At a media briefing on the third day of the just concluded four-day meeting of the US-Philippines Society, a non-profit, private sector organization that helps promote the Philippines’ interest in Washington D.C., Amb. Romualdez made an earnest plea for the Philippine business community “to help us get to where we want to be,” emphasizing that “our relationship with the US is at its best right now. This is the time we have to take advantage of this relationship because the interest is so high.”

Specifically, the Philippine envoy to the US cited the work President Marcos has done in strengthening the country’s security alliance with the US… stressing the fact that “obviously the Philippines is very important in its overall strategy in the Indo-Pacific region, so the focus is with us and other countries, but ours is the most important one…”

The US interest, he pointed out, is reflected by the high number of top American CEOs who want to join the trade and investment mission to the Philippines scheduled next month, March 11 and 12, that will be led by US President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

From a high count of 60 US firms that signed up to join the mission, Amb. Romualdez said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo had pared down the number of CEOs to 30 to make sure that the list is more focused to areas where the Philippines wants to attract investments.

However, that number is now back to 70 (with the list still growing), as the new Philippine co-chair of the Society, Ayala Corp. chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala and his coordinating team, led by Rene Almendras, has extended the Filipinos’ trademark warm hospitality to accommodate more participants.

In fact, Almendras said their concern now is looking for a much bigger venue for the activities and a dinner (to be co-hosted by Enrique Razon’s ICTSI) for the forthcoming US trade and investment mission.

Investment areas

The investment focus areas, Amb. Romualdez enumerated, are in infrastructure and distribution for energy, the digital sector and Artificial Intelligence, the manufacturing sector — particularly for the semiconductor industry — and for the minerals sector, specifically nickel, which is being exported primarily to China as the Philippines lacks the capacity to process the raw nickel.

Investments in the Philippine semiconductor industry, Amb. Romualdez pointed out, would particularly benefit from the inclusion of the Philippines in the list of seven countries eligible for funding under the US Chips and Science Act that seeks to boost American research, development and production of semiconductors, and tackle supply chain vulnerabilities stemming from the US government’s previous reliance on China and Taiwan-made semiconductors that have been strained by geopolitical risks stemming from Russia’s war against Ukraine and China’s growing aggressiveness in the Indo-Pacific sphere, and the strengthened alliance among Russia, China and North Korea.

The Philippine semiconductor industry, thus, he added, is hoping to attract more US investments in the sector that is expected to continue to grow and would allow the country to become part of the $80-billion global value chain as the US moves away from China.

The Philippine diplomat is also hoping that it can work with the semiconductor companies operating in the Philippines to help us “craft the right kind of atmosphere (for US investors) to choose us instead of these other countries.”

It also dovetails, Amb. Romualdez said, with President Marcos’ appeal during his visit to the US in May last year for the US to help the Philippines attain economic prosperity.

The Philippine President, he said, had stressed to the White House, the US Congress, US businessmen and US economic managers that the Philippines wants to have more business as economic prosperity “means economic security for us. It is very important for us to have that, so that if in the event, hoping that it will never come, that if there will be some form of economic coercion from countries that are aggressively trying to do things to us in an unacceptable way, we have something to fall back on, because at the end of the day that is really what is important to a country… economic security.”

Charter change

The Philippine envoy, thus, explained the need for charter change, specifically for the economic provisions, as some of the reforms, according to him, need some refinement, citing for instance the exploration of natural resources, which under the current Constitution, is limited only to Philippine companies. “We need to have some changes in these things if we want to have more investments and compete with other countries,” he said.

He said Indonesia, which has quite a lot of nickel, has processing plants and has no problem exporting to the US.

However, the Philippine envoy pointed out that the grade of Indonesia’s nickel ore is much lower than ours. “Ours is one of the best in the world, No. 2 or No. 3, and sadly all of these are going to China. They process it and export it to the US.

With growing security concerns over China’s dominance of critical minerals, the US and the Philippines are also hammering out a critical minerals agreement.